Everybody Lives

"Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!"

— The Doctor, Doctor Who, "The Doctor Dances"

Some TV shows naturally have a body count in virtually every episode (if only the Monster of the Week). Sometimes, however, no-one dies at all.

This is more satisfying than a random episode of a show where nobody ever dies; it shows that even in a world that's gray with complexities and cynicism, sometimes you really can Earn Your Happy Ending. It can come off as cheap if handled poorly such as a Deus ex Machina but it can also come off as awesome.

Frequently doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.

Contrast Everybody's Dead, Dave, "Everybody Dies" Ending, and Nobody Can Die. Not to be confused with Nobody Dies (an NGE fanfic).

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

One Piece had this going for a while, like when a character appears to have died turns out to be OK by the end of the arc, and only in flashbacks have characters died, which makes Ace and Whitebeard's deaths all the more jarring.
In Case Closed, it is a rare day indeed when the eponymous hero can go somewhere without someone dying in a convoluted manner, but it is a good day indeed. Note that these are usually instances where KID is actually attempting to steal something. There were also a couple of stories where Conan was able to prevent the murder before it happened, and a couple where there was no murder or crime, just a hilarious misunderstanding.
The TV series of Vampire Princess Miyu was a particularly bloody Dark Magical Girl show. There was only one episode which had a happy (and Les Yay) ending and in which nobody died (unless you count evil dolls). However, the show seemed to feel the need to compensate for this by killing off an entire village in the next episode.
My-HiME: At the end EVERYBODY that died comes back to life, with the exception of the defeated Big Bad the Obsidian Lord and possibly Father Joseph.
- The same applies to the manga, but without the resurrections
Girls und Panzer High School girls using World War II tanks, with LIVE AMMO! Despite all the big gun ammunition expended, ranging from machine gun fire to 600mm shells from a siege mortar, no one dies. Not even any serious injuries.
The second-to-last episode of Library War ends with two major characters potentially dead: one being shot multiple times in the chest, and another getting caught in a large explosion. However, in the last episode, they both make a full recovery.
One arc in Higurashi: When They Cry ends in this matter.
- Played completely straight in the final arc of Kai.
Franken Fran throws in a few of these to mix things up. There's slightly fewer if you don't count chapters where technically no-one dies, but someone ends up going insane or suffering a Fate Worse than Death... and in Chapter 21, Everybody Lives is the Downer Twist Ending, as a character the reader neither wanted nor expected to make it through the chapter without dying or suffering a Fate Worse than Death gets off scot-free.
Total confirmed Negima! Magister Negi Magi casualties by the end... zero. No dead bad guys, good guys, mooks or civilians. Not even the village that was turned to stone in the backstory. Practically the only character confirmed to be dead currently is Gateau Kagura Vanderburg, Takahata's former teacher. In fact, with the exception of Chigusa, all of the villains go out of their way to avoid civilian casualties. The only deaths are when Asuna wakes up in the future and the entire class^noteSans Eva and Chao is dead. To be fair, this takes place 130 years in the future and with the exception of Negi, they all died of old age.
Despite the huge body count in RahXephon, everyone lives in the end after Ayato uses the completed RahXephon system to recreate the world.
The Karin anime ends by killing off Karin's entire family... and then bringing them back to life. A case of Adaptation Distillation, as the manga is far more bittersweet.
In the last episode of Serial Experiments Lain everybody who had died in the series is alive in the new reality created by Lain, where she doesn't exist.
The original Steel Angel Kurumi does this: as the last episode goes on, all the Steel Angels had given up their power to power a cannon to destroy the One-Winged Angel form of Kurumi, only for Nakahito to start bringing her back... when the cannon's fired, apparently killing them both. In their "afterlife", the two come to, share a True Love's Kiss, reviving them and all the Steel Angels.
The best case scenario The Kindaichi Case Files can get is when Hajime has to solve a botched murder only to find out that it was a misunderstanding, the victim got better and all is forgiven.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion is an example where it's actually portrayed as a bad thing, or at the very least morally ambiguous. Mostly because it's accomplished by a character becoming the devil.
- Averted in the PSP game, where it's revealed that there IS a method to Homura's time repeating, where the player can actually have Homura do all the right choices, and get a completely straight version of this trope!
Gundam Build Fighters and Gundam Build Fighters Try: On one hand, one wouldn't expect a show about model robots battling to have character deaths. On the other hand, it's still Gundam...
- ...so they play with it by having battles and moments that tend to ape typical character-death moments, such as the Big Brother/Mentor type getting trashed in battle, or the hero having to face his artificially-enhanced girlfriend forced to fight against her will, or a love interest sacrificing herself to protect the hero from an attack. But since it's all plastic models, nothing is ever at stake other than the costs of a few model kits and a couple of days building time.
Much to the surprise and relief of its fans, this ends up being the case in Akuma no Riddle. Everyone, even Chitaru and Hitsugi, is shown to be alive and well in the final episode.
In Umi Monogatari, despite numerous warnings of death should specific actions be taken, no one dies at the end of the series.
In Et Cetera all the protagonists survive the final battle at the end despite being shot to Swiss cheese.
- Baskerville alone survives massive blood loss, a gold mine cave-in, and a bullet in the chest.
The final episode of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars ends the series with everyone alive again.
Dragon Ball Z manages to be both this and "Everybody Dies" Ending. The only character to survive without dying once is Mr. Satan, but since Death Is Cheap, they all get brought back anyway. The only character to die permanently is Android 16, due to being fully mechanical.
- Dragon Ball Super's Universe Survival arc features quite the body count, by nature of being a battle royale where losing universes are erased on the spot. However, in the final episode, all the destroyed universes are brought back thanks to Android 17's wish on the Super Dragon Balls. Even Frieza — who was given 24-hours out of Hell to participate — is revived by Whis as a reward.
Jojos Bizarre Adventure technically has this for the main protagonists of Part 4, Diamond is Unbreakable. While some secondary characters (Shigechi and Aya) die as a result of Yoshikage Kira's actions, and the protagonists *do* have several close brushes with death (including a timeline where Bites the Dust actually manages to kill them successfully, before Hayato manages to force Kira into a situation where he needs to recall Bites the Dust early), the main story ends with the *entire* main cast living (with the exception of the ghost character Reimi, who peacefully moves on to the afterlife as she knows her death 15 years earlier has been avenged.) In most of the other parts, major character deaths prior to the story's finale are common.
By the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX's third season, of the 14 characters who venture into the Dark World, only four are decidedly alive. As Judai heads to battle Yubel, it is revealed that everyone who had "died" in the Dark World was simply trapped in another dimension and they're brought back to their homeworld soon after.
The extended ending of Shaman King sees almost every single major and minor character (except Yoh's father and Faust, who get Killed Offscreen shortly after the end, and characters who were already dead to begin with) alive, with ancillary media and the various sequel series showing what happens to them after the end. This was in a series where Anyone Can Die was a major plot point and it's especially egregious since ALL OF THEM had died shortly before the final chapter, and some of them even more than once.

Audio Plays

Big Finish Doctor Who:
- The Marian Conspiracy: Well, no characters die during the actual play. It is established that Rev. Thomas will be executed later, thereby setting history back on its correct course.
- In The Shadow Vortex, the villain disappears when the Doctor paradoxes her, but the Doctor assures us she isn't dead, just sent to the world she was trying to create (assuming the War Doctor can be trusted on this point). The other people who are killed over the course of the story are established to still be alive after the aforementioned paradox creates a Reset Button Ending.

Comic Books

Most of Batman's encounters with The Riddler tend to be like this. In comparison to his more homicidal comrades in Batman's Rogues Gallery, the cerebral nature of the Riddler's modus operandi was less likely to involve murder. Though that depends somewhat on the writer; sometimes he's as much of a homicidal maniac as everyone else.
The Technis Imperative is the rare crossover event where no one actually dies, and it can even be argued that by the end of it, the result was actually negative one deaths, as Cyborg returned.
Dan Slott's Spider-Man has declared that no one will die on his watch. Victims, villains, it doesn't matter. No one dies. After saving more than 7 billion people from Doc Ock's superweapon he considers it a failure because Silver Sable and Rhino were killed.
This is the goal of the Great Society from the New Avengers. In opposing the collapse of the Multiverse they refuse to take any lives or destroy any inhabited world. The Superman expy who leads them even gave a speech that directly invokes this, contrasting Reed Richard's earlier 'everything dies' speech.
Sun God: Everything lives. It lives before it dies, and we are judged by what we do during that time. Like a brilliant, life-giving star, we illuminate the universe, casting away the shadows. We celebrate life and then celebrate that creation. This is simply how things are. It cannot be contained. It never will. So we will not tolerate - we will not accept - the unnatural occurrence of an early end. Which is why I have summoned you here... to beat back the night... and to conquer death.
The Flash #54 from 1991 invokes this. To quote Wally West, "Nobody dies. It's a rule."

Fan Works

In The Beast Of Gusu, all the good characters who died in original canon get their happy ending.
In the Death Note fic A Charmed Life all the main characters survive except for those already dead in canon.
Child of the Storm has Doctor Strange reference the Trope Namer somewhat wistfully, saying how he hopes one day he'll manage to arrange a day when everybody lives (something given an extra layer because he's the In-Universe inspiration for Doctor Who and occasionally references that fact). It's referenced by the narration in chapter 58 of the sequel, where he finally seems to manage it.
Game Theory, surprisingly enough, given its tone. Out of the cast of name characters, everyone makes it through the story, including some who didn't survive in canon. In fact, it actually has a negative body count, because someone gets brought back to life.
Guilty Sparks: While a lot of people die throughout the story, everyone still alive by the final act, save Major Silva, manages to escape Halo alive. Unlike the source material, hundreds of Marines, Jackals, and Batarians manage to escape the Ring before it explodes thanks to Commander Shepard just doing his job.
Maidenless No Longer: The point of the fic is to save everyone (or at least all the women), including the ones who have inescapably terrible ends in the game.
In the Danganronpa fanfic, Never Say Never, starts out on the 6th class trial showing that all students have survived their murders attempts and execution and have since made peace with each other.
Nobody Dies. The clue's in the title really. Depending whether you believe Mari is still Mari, or just an Angel that thinks it's Mari, although the only person who holds with the latter theory in-universe is her mother.
The Second Try: At the end of the story, not only SEELE's Assimilation Plot has been thwarted and every death in the main cast averted (even Gendo's karmic retribution only puts him in a vegetative state), but Shinji and Asuka's daughter who was assumed to be Ret-Gone is brought back to them, making their family complete again. The only onscreen deaths are Rei (who, par for the course, comes back), Kaworu (after a heartwarming speech to convince a reluctant Shinji of its necessity), and Kyoko (by way of Heroic Sacrifice).
Touhou Ibunshu, despite being a Dark Fic, plays this straight for the first three arcs; although there are deaths no-one stays dead, and they'll all fine by the end. The fourth and final arc has the sole aversion, with the death of Fujiwara no Mokou.
In The Wizard in the Shadows, many The Lord of the Rings characters who died are saved, including Theoden and Boromir. And Grima Wormtongue, for an entirely different reason.

Film — Animated

A work based in the Titanic disaster would be the last place to expect this trope. However, two animated features made in the wake of Titanic (1997) and released so close together as to be Dueling Movies both use this trope, in spite of being based on the real-life disaster.
- The Legend of the Titanic. In this version, everybody is saved by talking whales and a talking octopus, as gratitude for stopping the plot of an evil whaling magnate. And yes, It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context. Two characters get a Disney Death, at the least.
- Titanic: The Legend Goes On. This version plays this trope mostly straight as well: The band and several of the passengers go down with the ship, but since they weren't "Major" characters their deaths are glossed over and treated as no big deal, with the epilogue explaining how everybody else lived happily ever after, with no trauma from the event whatsoever!
The same thing happens in Gnomeo & Juliet: While at first, it seems like Tybalt died, he appears glued back together at the Dance Party Ending.

Film — Live-Action

Cam: Apart from the revelation that the cam girl Baby died (in a genuine accident) several months ago, everybody survives the movie, with the only "victim" being completely non-sentient.
In Dresden, the main character (a British pilot), his love interest, their Jewish friend and HIS love interest, the main love interest's dad, and the love rival, ALL manage to survive the bombing of Dresden - even though some of them were in the train station that was the first place to get hit, and which was supposed to be absolutely obliterated. And the protagonist does this all with serious injuries. And he escapes back to England. However, this is subverted later when after the war, Protagonist flies back to see his true love (and, OMG, their child)... when his plane crashes. So, he is killed... in the post-script... by a voice-over.
Lampshaded in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - "Look, I hate it too. In movies where the studio gets all paranoid about a downer ending so the guy shows up, he's magically alive on crutches, I hate that. I mean shit, why not bring them all back?"
The Pennsylvania Miners Story, all the nine miners who were trapped in the flooded mine survive and are rescued and brought back to their families.
No one in Spy Kids (not even the bad guys) die. It's a family movie, after all.
Nobody dies in the first National Treasure film except for one mook who falls off an elevated platform. This is particularly notable considering how action-packed the movie is otherwise. This partly stems from the fact that the villain is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only resorts to violence when other measures fail.
The Western spoof The Hallelujah Trail deserves some notice for lampshading its zero casualty rate, since the climax of the movie is a many-cornered shootout between the US cavalry escort of a whiskey shipment, an armed Temperance Union wagon train, some very un-PC Native Americans and a band of thirsty hard-rock miners; the cavalry commander (Burt Lancaster) exclaimed in the battle's aftermath, "Never have so many bullets been fired by so many people in so small an area AND NOT HIT ANYBODY!" To be fair, there was a dust storm at the time, and one laggardly brave appeared to have been shot in the butt. Twice. Which gives an ironic tone to a tragedy on the set when a stuntman died during the production.
Similarly, no one stays dead in the Back to the Future films. Well, it's possible those Libyan terrorists in the first film didn't survive the van crash, so they might have died, but they could have only been injured just as easily. If Deleted Scenes count, Marshall Strickland was murdered by Buford Tannen in Back to the Future Part III, though the scene was cut explicitly because of this trope (Buford would have surely been hanged for killing a lawman, but according to the plot he had to live in order to keep the Tannen bloodline going).
In Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland (2010), despite having an epic battle at the end, nobody dies. Well, only The Jabberwocky.
In Magical Legend of the Leprechauns...let's say that the ending is a complete reversal of the source material, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
No one dies in Inception unless you count the protagonist's wife, who was dead before the story began, Nash who presumably gets Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves offscreen, and Fischer's Dad who dies of old age off-screen. Although the Mind Screw nature of the film allows interpretations all along this line.
No one dies in Inside Man. This is especially notable because the bank robbers are spending the entire movie making sure no one dies and that everyone thinks the hostages are in danger. This is a central part of the robbers' plan since if Everybody Lives and nothing seems to be stolen from the bank, the police are unlikely to expend significant resources pursuing them in the aftermath.
The film The Old Dark House (1932) is a rare Horror Film where Everybody Lives.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the only Star Trek film in which no one dies, not even a Red Shirt. This was a conscious decision on Leonard Nimoy's part, as he wanted the film to be Lighter and Softer after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. In fact, in Nimoy's own words, "nobody is hurt in Star Trek IV as a result of hostility." Note that when Chekov is injured escaping from the naval base, it's because he falls over a ledge and not because anyone shot at him. (If you want to get really technical, however, Gillian did slap that guy.)
- The fate of the Federation starship disabled by the Whale Probe at the beginning of the film is ambiguous, however. The vessel is drained of all power and left drifting in space, far from any hope of rescue, as the Federation has a much greater problem to deal with at that point in time. The novelization does mention that the captain of that ship was able to save the ship and her crew (including herself).
Poltergeist is a relatively rare horror film in which none of the human characters die.
The Entity is another horror movie with no deaths... but in a way, this actually makes it SCARIER. Instead of being about an evil force trying to kill someone, it's an evil force relentlessly and endlessly tormenting them. At the end of the movie, no one is dead but the entity hasn't been defeated either. We get one last tense suspenseful scene making it clear that this thing will continue to torment our main character - and in case that wasn't already obvious enough, there are even captions on the end mentioning the events are "still occurring today".
Showtime is a Buddy Cop Show where nobody dies.
Both adaptations of The Amityville Horror, the 2005 remake (well, the dog dies) and the 1979 original, save for the flashbacks to the murders before the main story. Somewhat forced in that they're based on an allegedly true story which everyone involved survived.
Conversed in Throw Momma from the Train when Owen writes a children's book very loosely based on the preceding events. "Nobody gets killed in this book". Nobody gets killed in the film either, although Momma dies offscreen — of old age.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a rare example of a science fiction blockbuster that doesn't involve any of the characters dying.
In Coherence, nobody dies, no matter how much the heroine tries to sabotage this trope in the third act.
In the Good Future of X-Men: Days of Future Past, everyone seen to die in the Bad Future is saved, and indeed, so too are a great many characters killed off in previous films. Several supporting characters from First Class remain dead, but since that happened between movies it's not material. Every single named character in the story of this film is saved in the end (even the bad guys).
In The Best Offer nobody dies, the climax consists of the hero getting scammed big time.
Edge of Tomorrow undoes every human death within the timeline of the film via Reset Button, but not the ones before it.
The 1974 made-for-TV movie Skyway to Death is about a group of people trapped midway through a ride on a malfunctioning cable car (which had been sabotaged by a disgruntled ex-employee) as they attempt to go down the mountain on it. The title is most misleading, as everybody makes it out okay.
With the exception of the dog and Amelia's husband (who died in a car accident before the events of the movie proper), The Babadook is another rare horror film in which nobody dies. Not even the title creature.
The Silence of the Hams: At the end, every character who was killed during the movie turns out to be alive because of a Latex Perfection disguise.
With the exception of Mark's potatoes, there are no deaths in The Martian. Yes, even in a film directed by Ridley Scott, with Sean Bean in the cast.
In the climax of Hot Fuzz nobody is shown dying, although they are certainly injured. Probably Fridge Brilliance in that Angel most likely wants to have as few casualties as possible. The NWA's leader, Tom Weaver does seem to die at the end, but even then it was an accident and not directly by Angel.
In stark contrast to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is exactly one death in Spider-Man: Homecoming, of a very minor character, and it was a genuine accident, too, making it a downplayed.
The body count of Artemis Fowl is zero. Everyone that was in play at the start of the film is still in play and the only ones dead are those who were already said to be dead before the the events of the film started, specifically Artemis's mother Angeline Fowl and Holly Short's father Beechwood Short.
The climax of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 features a massive battle that did not happen in the book, in which several supporting characters die before the villains are ultimately vanquished. This is then revealed to have been a vision shown to the Big Bad of what would happen if he actually did fight the protagonists, and knowing he will lose, he allows the conflict to be resolved peacefully.

Literature

King's Ransom is the only book out of 55 87th Precinct novels in which no one dies.
Death is a character virtually guaranteed an appearance in every Discworld book (only absent from two books in a series with dozens of entries), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that at least one person dies in each book. The two times nobody bites it in the course of the story (of which only one of the above-mentioned books is, interestingly enough) therefore come as a bit of a surprise. Of course, in one of those cases, the guy who didn't die probably wished he had.
Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
- Doctor Who New Adventures: In Sleepy by Kate Orman, the Doctor vows early on that this time everybody lives: "villains, innocents, everyone." And he seems to have succeeded ... until he remembers that one person was killed in an accidental fire when he was somewhere else.
- The novelisation of "Shada" has all the people who died in the story resurrected in extra-sexy new bodies.
Terry Pratchett, while writing Good Omens, insisted that nobody would die as a result of Adam the Antichrist's existence, to the point of persuading co-author Neil Gaiman to reverse the deaths of several innocent telephone salespeople at the mandibles of an enraged demon.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the only J. K. Rowling book in which no human or animal is killed; Pettigrew escaping any possible death sentence and then Harry and Hermione going back in time to save Buckbeak (scheduled to be executed) and Sirius (scheduled to have his soul ripped out of his body). If you only count human deaths, everyone lives in Chamber of Secrets too since only the basilisk died.
The Poison Belt features what the main characters believe will be the end of the world, thanks to the Deadly Gas of the title, but it turns out to be entirely harmless and no one dies.
The Christopher Buckley political satire The White House Mess inverts this trope. In an Alternate History where the Democrats win the White House in 1988, president John Tucker handles a terrorist insurrection in Bermuda, without killing a single person, by spraying a gas that makes the entire island fall asleep. The media, even in the United States, characterize him as a monster. Later on, when people actually die in a conventional commando raid, Tucker is devastated, but no one else cares.
From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back: "Amara Kel's Rule for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)" features a lot of fighter combat in the incredibly dangerous asteroid belt and makes repeated comments about the short life expectancies of Amara's rookie wingmates, AKA "cloudflies." However, the story ends with the entire squadron alive, even though one pilot briefly gets lost in the asteroid field and another has to be towed back to their ship after ejecting (which is risky whenever there are floating rocks or debris nearby).
Amara: Even Cloudflies sometimes get lucky.

Live-Action TV

Those familiar with [adult swim]'s brand of pitch-black humor would hardly expect anything different from one of its fake infomercials Broomshakalaka, where a crazed salesman tries to sell enough obviously faulty multi-purpose brooms to equal the life of his dead daughter, and dies a slow and agonizing death after accidentally chopping off both his hands, all while his TV guests reluctantly try to keep the show going in the middle of a Freak Out. When they successfully hit the sales mark, it actually brings the salesman's daughter back to life; hitting twice the amount brings the salesman back with both his hands attached; and three times the amount resurrects the guests' beloved dead dog.
In the season 6 premiere of Bones, Booth, dissatisfied with the Everybody's Dead, Dave nature of their work, forces his own Everybody Lives by finding a victim alive.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the show has a high bodycount and each episodes features at least a few innocent victims and some demons being slayed. A handful of episodes has everyone surviving. Those include "The Witch" (where the villain ends up trapped inside a trophy), "A New Man" (the conflict is about Giles being turned into a harmless monster) and "Restless" (which almost entirely takes place inside a dream) and "Gone"(where buffy is turned invisible by the ineffectual Trio).
On Cold Case, one presumed murder victim was found still alive, having suffered amnesia from her injuries and begun a new life in a neighboring state. The closing scene, where the cardboard box holding her case's evidence is folded up and discarded rather than re-labeled, could be the supreme visual embodiment of this trope. This is the only fully straight example of this trope on the show; there are other episodes where a specific presumed murder victim is found to be alive, but in every other instance, there's still at least one death connected with the case in some way.
Criminal Minds. Especially notable since the show is about serial killers.
- "Tabula Rasa" focused solely on the trial of a serial killer who had woken up from a four-year coma. Amazingly, even when he escapes no one new dies (the girl they think he's taken turns out to be the corpse of his first victim, which he ran to find once his memory came back).
- "The Crossing" features a stalker who successfully captures his victim but the victim stays alive because she plays along with his fantasy, allowing her to eventually be rescued.
Surprisingly, even CSI has done one of these - in "You Kill Me", all the murders took place in the Lab Rats' (and Grissom's) imaginations.
Doctor Who has a number of examples, despite its (deserved) reputation for high body counts.
- The Trope Namer is "The Doctor Dances", which ends with the above quote as the kid who got hit by a bomb and all the other gas-mask zombies get better, extra points that a random old lady even had her amputated leg restored.
  - Almost subverted, as while the Doctor was celebrating (see page quote), it seems Rose had to remind him that Captain Jack was still babysitting a 4000-pound German bomb that was in the process of exploding.
- While there is a body count in Moffat's "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", everyone killed during the two-parter is revealed to be living in a virtual world in the Library's computer. Even Donna's nonexistent children from when she was "saved". River even uses this trope by name in her closing narration.
  River: Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives.
- Moffat has ascended to achieving a whole new level of Everybody Lives in "The Big Bang", seeing as everyone who had previously been erased from existence, including Amy's parents, Rory, the Doctor and the ENTIRETY OF REALITY comes out of it alive.
- Others include "The Edge of Destruction" (by virtue of having no guest stars), "Fury from the Deep", "The Mind Robber", "Castrovalva" (well, nobody real dies), "Four to Doomsday", "Snakedance", "Fear Her", "The Beast Below", "Night Terrors", "Hide", "Listen", "In the Forest of the Night".
- Perhaps paradoxically (given the name), "Terminus". At least, there are no on-screen deaths.
- An interesting case occurred with "The Curse of the Black Spot", in which the Doctor, Amy, and Rory land on a pirate ship stuck in the ocean with a crew that's being picked off one by one by a siren, who marks crew members with "the black spot" on their hand. It turns out that the seemingly evil siren was actually a computer-created doctor from a crashed spaceship which had been taking men who were hurt, even though they did not have serious injuries. All the crew are in fact perfectly fine, and she was just trying to help.
- "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" also pulled one of these, with bonus points for the father and at least two crew of his bomber that turned out to be not so much "lost and presumed dead" as "took a detour through the Vortex".
- Brilliantly subverted in "Death in Heaven", where dead humans are reanimated as Cybermen by Missy, only to die again in a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Earth. Bonus points for killing Danny Pink at the start of the episode, who was a key supporting character in the series.
- "The Pilot" has an interesting take on this trope, as we finish the episode believing Heather died, and it takes until the last episode of the series for it to be revealed that she was simply converted into a different type of life form.
- Capaldi's regeneration story, "Twice Upon a Time", has this thanks to there being no actual antagonist nor an evil plan, as well as the Doctor returning the Captain to the First World War just as the Christmas Truce of 1914 begins.
- "The Ghost Monument" only has three guest characters besides the four mains, and everyone makes it out alive at the end.
- "Rosa": The antagonist has a Restraining Bolt preventing him from killing or hurting anyone, and is last seen perfectly alive as he's Trapped in the Past with his own temporal displacement weapon, thus having a second straight episode with no deaths.

This is relatively common (though not so common that it's a given) in Flashpoint, so the individual examples aren't really noteworthy, but the frequency of it makes the show as a whole stand out in comparison to other shows in its genre.
Game of Thrones is well known for killing off major and minor characters on a regular basis. Across 8 seasons and 73 total episodes, there have only been 5 episodes in which there is no death.
- "Lord Snow" aired before the show had earned its reputation of killing everyone and everything off, but it was the first episode in which there was no death.
- "The Prince of Winterfell" featured nothing on screen either, though Qhorin Halfhand talks of his adventures and the death involved.
- "Dark Wings, Dark Words" saw news of Lord Hoster Tully's death, but other than that, nothing.
- "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" sees the bear almost get the Maiden Fair, but not quite.
- Season 8's second episode, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms", was a break in the action before the Battle of Winterfell, and it served as an episode in which more reunions took place.
In the Grey's Anatomy episode "Disarm", a local college is hit by a school shooter, causing a massive influx of trauma patients. At the end of the episode, Chief Webber comments that of the 26 people shot, including the shooter, no one died. Nervous laughter from the assembled staff lampshades the unlikeliness of this 100% success rate.
The Grimm episode "Bad Moon Rising" doesn't involve anyone dying, but there is a brief scene advancing the investigation of a murder from the previous episode.
In the Volume 5: Redemption season finale of Heroes, the Heroes manage to stop Samuel's plot to destroy New York City without causing or allowing a single death. Thanks to Big Bad Samuel's many Kick the Dog moments throughout the season, his right-hand men and other followers are all convinced to turn against him without a fight, rendering the previously all-powerful Big Bad into a powerless sap to be dragged off by the cops. Meanwhile, Sylar stay true to his redemption and incapacitates Doyle without killing him in order to save Emma. This is pretty noteworthy considering the show's tendency to purge all its secondary characters at the end of each Volume, typically with a massive Sylar-centric bloodbath.
- "Hiros", "Distractions", "Company Man" and "Collision" are also episodes where no one gets killed (although the last named has Claire coming back to life).
Jeremiah: A small number of the show's thirty-five episodes end without anyone dying.
- "Mother of Invention" is the first episode where no one dies or is even injured, regardless of their moral alignment (minus one character talking about how her family died in the Big Death).
- While characters get beaten up in "Ring of Truth", "A Means to an End", and "Out of the Ashes", no one dies in those episodes.
Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Ryuki, whose main premise was There Can Be Only One, ends with Ren/Knight as the last remaining Rider after everyone else has been killed off. However, the master of the Rider War isn't too happy with this outcome (since his proxy Odin wasn't the winner) and attempts to start things over by rewinding time. However, Yui finally convinces him that no matter how many times the Rider War is run, she will never accept a new life from him if it's at the cost of thirteen others. So this time when he rewinds everything, he stays in the Mirror World with Yui and never starts the Rider War in the first place. Thus, Everybody Lives. Bravo, Yasuko Kobayashi (However, it's not known if this applied to Scissors, who may or may not be still very much dead. He was a corrupt bastard, so...).
- Kamen Rider Blade: All four Riders and their civilian friends live. Even the monsters aren't killed, since they cannot die.
Be very wary when Law & Order does this - if the Victim of the Week is still standing at the start of the trial segment, as a rule, the assailant will plead out and he'll be the one on trial for whatever made people try to kill him.
- Although the Season 16 episode "Red Ball" is a very, very rare straight example. A little girl is kidnapped, the cops catch the guy who did it but he won't tell them where the girl is (or even if she's still alive). He ends up trying to game the system, saying he'll only tell the police and prosecutors where the girl is if he's given a free pass with no prison time whatsoever - after much arguing and agonizing, Jack McCoy defies his superiors and grants the kidnapper the deal, more or less guaranteeing he'll be fired. The girl is found safe and well, the Judge presiding over the case overrules the deal McCoy gave the kidnappers and sentences him to a fair bit of prison time, and as the final kicker, Arthur Branch doesn't even fire Jack. Everybody wins (except the bad guy of course).
- Another rare straight example is the Series Finale. The detectives come across a website of someone boasting they're going to shoot up and blow up a school while showing off enough ammo and explosives to make their threat credible. The scramble is to try to find the perp before he can carry out his boast. In the end, a school shooting does occur, but the shooter is overpowered before he can kill anybody. Also, at her retirement party, Van Buren learns that her cancer tests have come back negative, and happily introduces everybody to her fiancée.
Life On Mars has the one with Reg Cole taking people hostage and threatening to kill someone at 2:00. As Sam says, "Nobody dies today."
In the elimination cooking show MasterChef, the rules of the elimination pressure test can be suspended when all participating contestants produce what are considered to be "flawless" dishes. This most usually occurs in the soufflé or dish replication tests where the contestants are competing against an objective standard and it would be considered unfair to eliminate someone who made no errors.
Mendol Ikemen has not one, but two faked deaths. The first is from the idols stabbing themselves with fake knives, and the second is the girls being shot with blanks.
The Mentalist would normally go out of its way to have collateral victims even in the cases involving kidnappings or faked deaths, however "Ruby Slippers" ultimately became the first episode to put this to use. ^note

Monk, which usually operates on Victim of the Week, has two episodes where absolutely no murder or death is involved: "Mr. Monk and the Missing Granny", which turns out to actually be a robbery, and "Mr. Monk and the Kid," which initially looks like a murder but later turns out to be a kidnapping.
Murder, She Wrote had a Christmas episode in which the intended victim survived.
- There was also the episode with the All Just a Dream ending, so after Jess returns to reality we see the "murder victim" alive and well.
NCIS usually has a Body of the Week. So it was surprising when nobody died in the season two premiere "See No Evil".
- Ditto "Bait" from season 3. And better: the supposedly dead mother in the episode was Faking the Dead, and shows up at the end.
NUMB3RS had a few in the later seasons:
- "Chinese Box" has only an attempted murder; the intended victim gets a few non-lethal gunshot wounds.
- In "Power", the team is chasing a serial rapist rather than a killer.
- "Jacked" has a particularly clever variation: the FBI witnesses an apparent murder via hidden camera, but it turns out to be staged.
- Similarly, in "Hydra", a non-custodial mother claims to have killed her daughter as the cops were closing in. She eventually admits that she was lying; her daughter was actually a clone, and her "father", the custodial parent, treated her as nothing more than a scientific specimen, so the mother tried to fake the girl's death so that she could disappear off the radar and live a normal life.
No one died in the Psych episode "Shawn and the Real Girl", though there were a few attempted murders.
The Sherlock episode "The Sign of Three" has two potential murder victims, both of whom are saved by John's medical skills.
Smallville usually featured some deaths in most episodes, but thanks to Clark's Thou Shalt Not Kill policy, there's actually a fairly substantial minority of episodes, on average about 7 per season for 10 seasons, where Clark managed to save the day for everybody. So in about 70 episodes, nobody dies and Everybody Lives.
Stargate-verse:
- Stargate SG-1 has several episodes like this, and they're inevitably either comedy episodes (e.g. "Window of Opportunity", "Wormhole X-Treme") or episodes with a very small cast (e.g. "Grace").
- Stargate Atlantis has a few episodes where no-one dies. "Echoes", where the psychic "whales" on the planet manage to warn Atlantis of the massive coronal mass ejection that's about to fry the planet with radiation, and "McKay and Mrs Miller", where Rodney, his sister and his alternate universe counterpart "Rod", join forces to save their respective universes from an experiment gone awry.
- Stargate Universe, the episode "Light" where the crew face imminent death due to Destiny being both out of power and stuck on a collision course with a nearby star. Turns out that Destiny flew into the star on purpose in order to refuel. The very-much-alive crew then manage to safely rescue the shuttle containing "survivors" chosen by lottery earlier, before the ship slingshots out of the system and jumps back into FTL.
Being monster hunters, the boys from Supernatural don't usually find out about a hunt unless someone has died already. But in one episode, "Home", the brothers go to the site before anyone dies, since Sam had a vision, making it the first Everybody Lives episode. A guy does get his arm ground up in a garbage disposal, though.
- No humans die neither in season 4 episode "Wishful Thinking". The only thing that "dies" is a teddy bear magically brought to life when the curse is reverted. "The Monster At The End of The Book" in the same season is another example: the plot starts when the Winchesters find a book about them in a store.
- Nobody dies permanently in the season three episode "Mystery Spot". Dean dies over a hundred times, but at the end of the episode, none of them actually happened on that timeline.
- Surprisingly for a just-before-the-finale episode, no one dies in "When the Levee Breaks" (4.21). The deaths are saved for "Lucifer Rising", which is sort of its second half. It's still a ridiculously sad episode.
- The Season 11 episode "Don't Call Me Shurley"; not only does no one die, but God's intervention resurrects the people who had died, bringing the number of deaths into the negative numbers.
Given the horror-themed nature of the series, this trope rarely takes place in Tales from the Crypt, though a handful of episodes still end this way.
- "The Switch" ends with two of the three characters permanently swapping their body with the other's, but everyone gets to live with the aftermath of said body-swapping.
- Barring some passersby who briefly show up and leave alive, the only characters in "Cutting Cards" are two men who compete against each other in The Bet that has them continuously drawing with each other right up to the end of the episode — and they're both alive and kicking (and competing).
The Unit with "Natural Selection". Mind you, much of said episode is a Flash Back to Bob Brown's selection process and the plot involves no combat at all.

Nobody dies in The X-Files episode "The Rain King", unless you count animal deaths (there was a poor cow). The double-part "Dreamland" is also an example, as the only character who did die in the first part was brought back to life in the second one. And in the very next episode, "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", nobody dies technically, as everyone other than Mulder and Scully is already dead to begin with.

Music

Ice Cube's 'It Was a Good Day' is the musical equivalent of this trope, considering the usual subject matter of his songs. "Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A./Today was a good day."
Nickelback's "If Everyone Cared" is about wanting this but also states there are a lot of conditions that must be met for it to happen.

Mythology and Religion

There are several competing doctrines of salvation in Christianity, and while most of them state that some will be eternally damned or destroyed, the doctrine of universal reconciliation states that Christ will succeed in saving everyone who has ever lived, based on verses from The Bible such as: "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." -I Cor. 15:22; "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." -John 12:32; "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." -I John 2:2; and many others.

Theatre

Bérénice is the only tragic play by Jean Racine where all the protagonists live through it. The end where the lovers have to live apart still manages to be depressing.
The Merchant of Venice. Antonio's ship, presumed to have been lost in storm, had unbeknowstly managed to reach emergency harbour and return eventually to home. Antonio manages to pay his debt to Shylock.

Theme Parks

Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Universal's Islands of Adventure shows or mentions that all of the Eighth Wonder Expedition crew members survived the ordeals depicted in the ride, even though the attraction makes it seem as though some of them were killed.

Video Games

Surprisingly, despite other games in its series and genre involving Anyone Can Die a lot, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault has the entire main cast survive, albeit with Minoso being forced to miss out the Final Battle due to being wounded prior.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you are led to believe that Grodus died from the Shadow Queen and TEC died in the explosion at the X Naut base. However, in the ending cutscene, it is revealed that Grodus is still alive, albeit as just a head that hops around. TEC also lives, saying that he destroyed the facility so it could not be used for evil... And that afterwards, he miraculously came back to life with no memory damage. the only explanation he has is "I don't know how it happened".
This is one of the endings from the third game of the series Splatterhouse.
Mass Effect:
- The Golden Ending of Mass Effect 2 has this as the result of the much vaunted Suicide Mission. Only if you fully upgrade the ship, gain the majority of the squad's loyalty, assign the mission duties perfectly—if you missed any loyalties, don't use those team members,—and make sure you leave behind the right people and have enough loyalty to Hold the Line, and leave immediately after your crew is kidnapped (or you'll lose part or all of your ship's population, including Kelly Chambers). This is one happy ending you will have to earn.
- In Mass Effect 3, the Golden Ending to the Rannoch arc, where if you have done everything right in the previous game as well as this one, you can convince the quarians and the Geth to finally make peace after three hundred years of war. Technically, Legion does cease to exist even then, but it's not so much death as "becoming part of the entire Geth race" to spread the modified Reaper code and give them true sentience. Joker even triumphantly proclaims "We didn't lose anyone!" EDI however, counters that Legion did in fact die, and specifically notes that he referred to himself as "I" rather than "We" in his final moments. She cites this as proof that in his final moments, he was no longer "merely" an avatar of the Geth consensus, but a person. Even if he became one with the geth, that personally is gone.
At the end of Final Fantasy X-2, one of the protagonists details his plan to sacrifice his own life, and possibly that of a close comrade, to take out the Big Bad. At that point, Yuna decides to voice her honest opinion: "I don't like your plan. It sucks." She then goes on to explain that she's sick of winning through Heroic Sacrifice and that this time nobody is going to die.
Downplayed in mission 3 of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: after you defeat the enemies and make your way back to base, Chopper starts counting the planes, then counts them again, and ecstatically proclaims that he sees three aircraft in the air, i.e. just as many as had taken off at the start of the mission. Considering how in every deployment until then, the Wardog's numbers always dwindled by the end, his joy is understandable. Ironically, he would be the last Wardog pilot to be killed in action half a game later.
Tales Series:
- The ending to Tales of Vesperia not only finds the whole party alive and well, but the final boss too.
- Tales of Graces is a second example Lambda's status is left somewhat ambiguous - apparently he "goes to sleep for a while." If you're playing Graces f, however, it's very clear he's alive and well in Asbel's head.
Sissel's mission, in each chapter of Ghost Trick, is to make sure the dead person in every chapter lives this time around. At the end he reverses time to ten years ago and saves Yomiel from the meteorite, erasing the horrible effects to him and those he hurt in his attempt at revenge. Everyone lives... including Yomiel and Kamila's mother, who were dead before the game even started.
In Dragon Age: Origins, most of the big quests require hard choices. The Dalish? At the very least, a whole bunch of werewolves (who may be innocent) Zathrian, and Witherfang/The Lady Of The Forest are going to die, even if you decide to spare the ones left when you get to the Gatekeeper. The Circle Tower? Even if you dedicate yourself to saving the mages, only Irving and a handful of other mages survive the carnage. Orzammar? All your powers of persuasion can't convince Bhelen to spare Harrowmont, or talk him down from initiating a brawl in the Assembly Chamber if you chose Harrowmont. But Redcliffe, now, Redcliffe... You can motivate people into defending their hometown from a horde of undead when they thought they were too cowardly. You can ensure that everyone still kicking when you first arrive in town survives the battle. You can save a mother who was willing to sacrifice herself to save her demon-possessed son, save her son by entering a battle in the center of his mind, and then cure the husband and father of the poison he was afflicted by.
- Your own party also has some work to do to be entirely whole by the end of the game. Leliana and Wynne will fight you to the death if you decide to defile the Urn of Sacred Ashes with them present (Leliana survives to play her role in Dragon Age: Inquisition regardless, explaining the incident as waking up at the foot of the mountain with no idea how she survived. This is further explained in a possible epilogue for the game's final story DLC). "Dog" can be killed instead of recruited, ditto Zevran. Either Alistair or Loghain can end up executed as a result of the Landsmeet, and it takes some doing to keep both of them alive, particularly if you want to keep the former involved in the plot and sober. Morrigan is the only companion that can't end up dead by the end of the Blight, and even then, you can stab her and leave her for dead at the end of the Witch Hunt DLC. Keeping that grab bag of dysfunctions and disorders wholly alive through the game takes a spot of work.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Play your cards right, and everyone will make it out alive (save the 9th Man, but he bites the dust before the player even has a dialogue choice). In fact, Zero/Akane designed the game to achieve this result, except for the Asshole Victims who tormented her in the past (the 9th Man being one of them), and all other deaths are a result of the other characters.
- The sequel Virtue's Last Reward also plays this trope in the true ending though you have to work quite hard to get it. This includes(!) the person who dies before you have any choices and like before, both the chess master behind it and the one person trying to kill everyone.
- The third game, Zero Time Dilemma has an interesting variation on this. This first ending you get by default is an Everybody Lives ending where none of the characters remember anything. To discover the truth behind the game's events, you have to suffer through numerous character deaths and bad endings before getting the opportunity to overwrite your initial ending with characters who are actually aware of the truth.
Little Busters!: The final end that Riki and Rin create has them able to save everyone from the bus crash, with everyone surviving. This is in contrast to the first ending, where Riki and Rin were the only survivours. However, there's enough ambiguity to leave it up to interpretation when the final ending actually happened, or whether Riki and Rin just created another stronger world for them all to stay in indefinitely.
The original anime of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a downplayed case. In the post-Madoka-rewrite universe Sayaka still dies from magic depletion at the train station but instead of Cessation of Existence she Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence to be with Madoka. However, two video games based off of the series (one official, one fan-made) allow this outcome:
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable: You'll definitely have to Earn Your Golden Ending, as in order to even unlock it you must play as Homura (which can only be done after playing through as the other four girls and satisfying certain requirements each time in order to unlock the next girl). As Homura, you must also make the correct choices at certain intervals AND be strong enough to defeat all the witches you come across, including Walpurgisnacht. If you do, though, Madoka doesn't contract, all the other girls come to terms with the fact that they are effectively liches, and they hold a happy tea party with cake at Mami's place.
  - There is also the bonus route, where Homura decides to get everyone happy and willing to cooperate with each other so that they won't waste magic fighting each other or be at risk at falling into despair. The ultimate result is a Subverted Trope, as them spending time bonding meant they neglected to train for Walpurgistnacht, which means that even with all five of them fighting they still lose and Homura has to reset the timeline again.
- Grief Syndrome has more straightforward criteria - none of the girls die (run out of Soul Limit) through the five witches and their levels. Do so, and you are treated to this splash screen◊ as your reward.
Bravely Default: The murder mystery sidequest can be solved without any deaths, but it requires inspecting the "corpse" of the first victim seventeen times, with only the first and the last having any apparent effect. The game provides precisely zero hints that this is possible. It's significantly easier in later loops.
The Golden Ending in Undertale has everyone, including the villain and the boss who dies in every other ending, surviving.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair downplays this. Everyone's hearts are still beating, but the people who "died" in the virtual Jabberwock Island are rendered comatose Empty Shells, and the 5 survivors face relapsing into their Brainwashed and Crazy states as a very real possibility. The anime sequel reveals that Hajime regained control of his body and restored all of his classmates to normal, resulting in this trope being played fully straight in the end.
- The other two games have ways to get an alternate ending cutscene where everyone survives and escapes; winning the Escape Switch in the Monomono Machine and making it through the Death Road of Despair before anyone dies. The short story IF, included with the second game, shows how the first game's alternate scenario might come to pass. The escape switch was a fake that shocked Makoto, but this also jogged his memories and led to him saving Mukuro from her early death, resulting in her having a Heel–Face Turn and taking it from there.
In the first and second games of the Fatal Frame series, beating the game on Nightmare gives a strange version of this type of ending. Both games have the only two characters who are alive at the start both alive and well at the ending. All the death and destruction in both games happened before the any of the playable characters arrive.
no-one has to die. Exactly What It Says on the Tin, of course, but the gameplay will tell the players otherwise.
Until Dawn has an achievement called 'everybody lives'. It's a slight misnomer as two characters die no matter what you do because their fate is out of your hands, but the achievement is earned by saving everyone you can save, by making the right choices and at Quick Time Event success.
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, DIO resurrects characters killed in the manga to fight the heroes, but after Jotaro and allies defeat him, all the revived characters stay alive and return to their time periods better equipped to handle their upcoming battles. This leads to different outcomes to the various Parts, including Zeppeli surviving to see Jonathon's final fight with Dio, Caesar tag-teaming with Joseph in his duel with Wamuu, Shigechi alive while Kira (or Kosaku) eyes him disdainfully, Bucciarati's Gang standing together in the Colosseum, the Green Dolphin Street inmates and Jotaro relaxing together, Johnny and Gyro facing Alternate Universe Diego together, and Avdol, Kakyoin and Iggy saying goodbye at the airport with an intact Polnareff. Not only do our heroes live but so does every other heroic character in the setting!
Though Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is said by the developers to be a "playable Greek Tragedy," it's perfectly possible to make choices that spare the lives of numerous plot-important or notable characters, such as certain lieutenants, and the protagonist's entire family — younger sibling, (adoptive) father, mother, and step-brother.
In all games of the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story series, none of the characters died, aside from the Posthumous Character and in the present day, the Obviously Evil The Heavy Jerkass (Lubert in the first game and Gedharm in the second).
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, despite initially being presented as a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (a game where most of the cast has already been dead for 100 years) manages to get away with a death count of only one thanks to taking place in an Alternate Timeline, and even Terrako's death doesn't stick in the True Ending thanks to it being a robot whose memory core was still intact.
Do It For Me: The "Awake" ending has the protagonist refuse to kill anyone and turn the girlfriend in to the police, and no one dies, including the girlfriend.
Mermaid Swamp: In the good ending, all four protagonists survive. In the bad endings, either everyone dies, or almost everyone dies and the lone survivor suffers Uncertain Doom or A Fate Worse Than Death.
Insanity: In the good endings, all the protagonists survive. In fact, keeping everyone alive is the only way to get a good ending; if either Kenta or Riho are killed, you'll always get a bad ending.
In the Golden Ending for The Forgotten City, not only are all the people's you've met in the city alive, even the people trapped as golden statues long before their arrival are also brought back. Even the villain is still technically alive back in the city as the sole remaining golden statue.
Terminator: Resistance: The Golden Ending will ensure that all of your companions will survive the war and a seamless transition into the events of The Terminator. To get it, you have to: Acquire a working boombox for Ryan and then get him kicked out of the Resistance shelter; lie to Erin so she will go looking for her husband in Mexico; tell Jennifer and Patrick to leave the Resistance shelter; and allow Mack to study the Infiltrator CPU.
Digimon Survive, once you complete the game for the first time, you can play the game again and be able to save two of the protagonistic casts. Once the first one is saved, it automatically locks the future ending to its Golden Ending and none of the protagonistic and supporting casts will be casualties from then onwards.

Webcomics

Despite the extraordinary potential of Mad Science to create death, destruction, and mayhem, the heroes of A Miracle of Science manage to close the case on Virgil Haas without the death of anyone — including the Science-Related Memetic Disorder victim at the center of it.
Unsounded: Chapter 5 is the only chapter in which no deaths occur. Even dreams and flashbacks are death free.
Subverted in the Zebra Girl Story Arc "The Magi-Net". After Jack defeats Harold DuVase, the mages whom he had devoured reappear — but in the next strip, they reveal that they're only there to say goodbye before they go "where souls're meant to be in the end," much to Jack's surprise.

Web Original

A few episodes of Happy Tree Friends have no deaths, though most of them still have characters suffering horrible injuries
- No one dies in "House Warming", but Petunia nearly dies from being set on fire.
- In "Nuttin' But the Tooth", Nutty has his jaw and teeth pulled out, but lives.
- Lumpy hacks off both his legs in "Out on a Limb", but survives.
- "Intimate Spotlight" is the first episode where no one is killed or injured at all. It was followed by "Youtube 101: Subscriptions", "Deck the Halls", and "We Wish You".
- "Asbestos I Can Do" has no deaths or injuries in the video itself but does have a montage of deaths from previous and later episodes.
- Nobody dies in "Cold Hearted", but Giggles' eyes and optic nerves are ripped out.
- In "Dream Job", Sniffles gets driven insane by gory nightmares but survives.
The only DEATH BATTLE! to end without a fatality or carnage of any sort is "Deadpool vs. Pinkie Pie". It starts out normally enough with the combatants duking it out until they fourth wall-breaking abilities. Realizing they have much in common, they immediately call off the fight and become friends, effectively meaning that their destruction of the fourth wall allows them to break the rules of Death Battle that dictate one or both combatants need to die. This outcome naturally leaves Wiz and Boomstick equal parts disappointed and completely baffled as Deadpool and Pinkie Pie cap things off with a neatly hung lampshade:
Deadpool: Well, so much for the "death" in "Death Battle" now, right?
Pinkie Pie: Another happy ending!
(Deadpool and Pinkie Pie laugh, Iris Out)
In The Green Wanderer, the only named character who dies is a very minor villain with only a couple lines. Marrox even makes it to the end, despite suffering from a fatal illness and being days away from death.

Western Animation

Two episodes of Adventure Time, one set on a train and the other in a mansion, involve everybody supposedly being killed one by one as Finn and Jake try to identify the killer, but both times it turns out to be an elaborate prank by Jake.
The trope is invoked in the Justice League episode "Flash and Substance", when the Flash and Orion survey the damage to the Flash Museum toward the end:
Orion: I understand now. You play the clown to hide a warrior's pain.
Flash: Dude, the bad guys went down, and no one got hurt. Y'know what I call that? A really good day.
In the holiday episode for the first season of South Park, Kenny does not, in fact, perish in the usual way - whereas the creators had gone to great lengths to ensure his demise in every other one up to that point (subverting, as one review put it "a time-honored tradition that has been around for about ten weeks"). Lampshaded at the end, by having the characters remark 'Aren't we forgetting something?', with a meaningful close-up on Kenny (as if he was about to get killed once again), before the 'THE END' pops up, and Kenny lets out a triumphant "Woo hoo!".
- A later episode has Kenny and a new girl fall in love. When his inevitable death occurs, she runs over to him and screams, "SOMEBODY HELP HIM!" To which Stan and Kyle reply "help... him?" All this time it had never even occurred to them to try and do something to prevent Kenny from dying. The girl gives Kenny CPR, and the episode ends with him alive and well.
- And eventually the writers dropped the whole Kenny-dies-every-week gag altogether, making this trope fairly common in later seasons (although lots of other people are liable to die in any given episode.)
- Kenny dies of course in the original version of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", but in the end appears just fine, which leaves the four main kids alive and happy. Especially Cartman.
Steven Universe: The finale of season 5, "Change Your Mind", resolves the Homeworld storyline with a lasting peace between humanity, the Gems, the healing of all the corrupted Gems, and best of all, nobody dies. Steven's capacity for empathy and forgiveness, against all odds, redeems everyone and helps them Earn Your Happy Ending.

Real Life

Ernest Shackleton's crew on the Endurance became trapped in pack ice in Antarctica in 1914 and sank, but all crew returned to England after a long and risky rescue process. As in, they lived on the Antarctic ice for six months while waiting for it to melt enough to try to reach the nearest land (800 miles away) in a rowboat. (However, three of the crew of the Aurora which had travelled to the opposite side of Antarctica were lost.)
Apollo 13 suffered an oxygen tank rupture 300,000 km from Earth on April 14, 1970, and in returning to Earth had to travel around the Moon more than 400,000 km from Earth before the three astronauts' safe return. The movie Apollo 13 was based on this event. The documentary In The Shadow of the Moon includes some comments from Commander Lovell about this mission.
British Airways Flight 9 had all four engines stall due to volcanic ash before being restarted. The plane made a successful instrument landing at Jakarta on June 24, 1982, after the ash had reduced visibility through the cockpit windows.
TACA Flight 110 had both engines lose power during a thunderstorm but landed with only minor injuries to those on board near its destination of New Orleans on May 24, 1988.
British Airways Flight 5390 involved the blow-out of a cockpit windscreen with pilot Tim Lancaster left half outside the plane at 17300 feet altitude on June 10, 1990. After a successful landing and recovery, Tim Lancaster was back at work flying.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 made an emergency landing near Vängsjöbergs säteri in Gottröra, Uppland, Sweden on December 27, 1991 after both engines lost power. 129 people; all passengers and crew members survived, it was called the "Miracle at Gottröra".
Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378 ran out of fuel and landed 500 metres short of the runway at Vienna airport on July 12, 2000.
Air France Flight 358 involved an Airbus A340 widebody jetliner that ran off the end of the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport and caught fire on August 2, 2005. These sorts of accidents involving planes catching fire had always been deadly affairs even when the aircraft had either landed successfully or failed to leave the ground. A combination of toxic smoke in a cramped enclosed space and poor human factors engineering had always conspired to make getting out of a burning aircraft a dicey proposition. However, in the case of Flight 358 better designs and emergency techniques allowed the 309 passengers and crew to evacuate from the burning jet in under a minute without a single fatality.
British Airways Flight 38 lost power to both engines and landed just short of the runway at Heathrow airport on January 17, 2008.
Bristow Flight 56C was struck by lightning, causing severe damage to the tail rotor and forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in the North Sea on January 19, 1995.
Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 suffered a rudder malfunction on approach to Richmond Airport on June 9, 1996. Two other 737s had suffered an identical malfunction, with catastrophic results. This time, however, the flight crew was able to regain control and the plane landed safely.
Two more Canadian examples: Air Canada Flight 143 (in 1983) and Air Transat Flight 236 (in 2001), both of which ran out of fuel in mid-flight (in the former case, due to Unit Confusion between Imperial and Metric; the latter was a fuel leak that was misidentified and consequently mishandled), and were brought safely to the ground as enormous gliders, thanks to remarkable derring-do on the part of their crews, the first at a disused airbase in Gimli, Manitoba, the second in the Azores.
The Miracle on the Hudson, aka US Airways Flight 1549, made a successful water landing on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, after losing all power following a double bird strike shortly after takeoff. Hero pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger executed the near-perfect landing and all 155 persons on board were evacuated safely onto arriving boats despite the freezing temperatures. The birds do not count. The story was made into a 2016 movie.
Ural Airlines Flight 178 crash-landed in a cornfield after losing both engines to bird strikes.
The 2010 Copiapó mining accident in the Atacama desert in Chile. 33 men are trapped 700 meters underground for two months. All are successfully rescued. With a Rube Goldberg Device invented specifically for the purpose. This episode became the basis of its own movie in 2015.
The 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand, on September 4, 2010. It's a miracle that no one was killed by it!
- This was subverted - another earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22 the next year. This killed 185 people, despite only being a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, because the epicentre was located closer to the city (10 km rather than 40 km) and buildings that were already damaged by the September earthquake and its aftershocks collapsed on top of people. One building's collapse (the CTV Building) was responsible for 115 deaths alone. It was New Zealand's second deadliest natural disaster in history, after the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake (256 killed).
- Furthermore, the first earthquake struck at about 4:30 on a Saturday morning, when everyone was at home in bed. The second one struck on a Tuesday lunchtime when people were out and about in the city.
The Talladega Prison Rescue. Prisoners took over the prison and took hostages. The FBI responded by calling up the HRT and SWAT teams, who then stormed the building. The death toll of the raid was... zero. Not one hostage, FBI Agent, or prisoner was killed.
On April 13, 2012, El Salvador celebrated its first homicide-free day in nearly three years, due to a recent truce called by rival gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18. In the last three years, the average was 12 murders per day, reaching as high as 18. News articles even showed jailed members of the gangs giving thanks for the respite.
During the Invasion of Normandy on June 7, 1944, the troopship USS Susan B. Anthony hit a mine and sank, but all 2,689 people aboard were able to escape; it is the largest number of people rescued from a shipwreck without a single fatality.
On November 21, 2012, the NYPD announced that there were absolutely zero reported murders in New York City that day.
- In early October 2013, the entire five boroughs of New York City went an entire week without a reported homicide.
Cleveland, Ohio resident Charles Ramsey became a celebrity overnight when he rescued three women who had been held captive in his neighbor's house for a decade. The women were in their teens at the time of their abduction and were presumed dead.
During the Great Irish Famine, most of the ships carrying Irish immigrants to North America were overcrowded and filthy and provided little or no food or fresh water to their passengers. They came to be known as "coffin ships" because so many passengers died during their voyages, mostly from diseases like typhus. A ship called the Jeanie Johnston was a rare exception to this; her crew kept the ship clean and a doctor was always on board to care for the passengers. As a result, the ship made 16 voyages to North America without any passenger deaths. She eventually sunk while hauling a load of timber, but no one died then either; the entire crew was rescued by a Dutch ship a few days after the sinking.
The 2002 Quecreek Mine Rescue in Pennsylvania. An underground flood left nine coal miners trapped in a very precarious situation, but rescue workers got all of them out safely after 77 hours.
In 2013 Two skydiving airplanes crashed into each other mid-air. One was damaged to the point that it effectively disintegrated in mid-air, and caught fire. Meaning the skydivers who had bailed out from both planes now had to dodge fiery shrapnel as they plummeted to the ground. Somehow no died including the pilot of the airplane that disintegrated because he also had a parachute on.
The Buncefield fuel depot fire in 2005. A huge tank farm holding sixty million litres of assorted petroleum products in the middle of a trading estate, which is itself surrounded by housing developments, suffered a series of explosions (believed to be caused by a faulty level indicator causing a tank to overflow) that levelled a number of nearby buildings and a devastating fire that took two days and three-quarters of the Hertfordshire Fire Brigade to bring under control. Fatalities? Zero. It helped that the incident happened at 6AM on a Sunday morning when most nearby businesses were closed and the storage facility itself was running with a skeleton crew, and the heat-resistant fuel tanks bought enough time for everyone who was on site to reach a safe distance before the first explosion. The emergency services were even able to save the fish in a nearby river by setting up barriers to contain the runoff from firefighting foam.

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Examples:

Alternative Title(s): Everyone Lives, No Death

Previous

Index

Next

Everybody Lives

Edit Locked

As this is an Ending Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Examples:

Alternative Title(s): Everyone Lives, No Death

Previous

Index

Next